


Child Ballad

by executrix



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Jack Reacher books
Genre: AU, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 16:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2819525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Reacher is on the road again. So is a singing superstar. Reacher foils a dastardly plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child Ballad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperclipbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/gifts).



It was unexplored territory. A place where, for all his exploits, Jack Reacher had never been. But when you’re 6’5”, 250 pounds, and the only place that sells clothes in a 75-mile radius is Wal-Mart, catering to the lowest common denominator, then your only hope for clean underwear at one in the morning is a Laundromat. 

Much to Reacher’s surprise, the door opened. He thought he’d be left alone, to watch his laundry spin like an even faster world. A slim, blond man walked in, carrying a small basket of laundry under one arm, a paper bag in his other hand. He looked tired, anxious. More tired than the mere hour of the morning could account for. He was not unattractive, if you rolled that way. As, sometimes, Jack Reacher did, admiring intelligence, dedication, and steely purpose wherever he found it. 

In a manner that Reacher found curiously ceremonious (but, Reacher had learned in his plodding yet passionate pilgrimage, everyone has his own griefs, his own burdens to carry) the man opened the paper bag and took out two containers of frozen yogurt. He set one of them aside, centered the other precisely on the shining top of a washer, and with the speed born of long practice, turned the gleaming white paper bag into an origami temple to hold the yogurt cup. 

Then the man turned and saw Reacher. “Oh, hi,” he said. “I’m Billy. Uh, do you like frozen yogurt?”

“Sure,” Reacher said. He bent down (a long stretch, if you’re 6’5”, 250 pounds) disclosing a paper bag of his own. “Do you like coffee? They made it wrong the first time, so they gave me one on the house. I think they didn’t want any trouble.”

“Why? Do you usually start trouble in the quilted metal diners that are the real heart of America? Or the heart of the real America?”

“No,” Reacher said. “Seems like it finds me, though.”

“Well, I really like coffee,” Billy said. He took the yogurt (boysenberry swirl) from its shrine and handed it to Reacher with a tiny bow. He accepted the Styrofoam cup and raised it toward his forehead in acknowledgment. Then he rescued the Dulce de Leche frozen yogurt that previously he had set aside.

After a minute of licking and slurping, albeit of yogurt and coffee, Billy spoke before the laconic Reacher did. “What brings you out here? It’s pretty remote.”

“I thought I’d check out TerminatorGene Stadium,” Reacher said. “Largest stadium in the U.S. But you’re right, there doesn’t seem to be much here but the stadium.”

“That’s why I moved here,” Billy said. “After…well, I wanted to be someplace quiet.” It did make for a hell of a commute to Evil League of Evil meetings, but you couldn’t have everything. 

“Are you stoked?” came a voice on the radio playing in the background. “SHE’LL be here tomorrow for her sold-out concert at TerminatorGene Stadium! And, just to get you warmed up, here’s her latest #1 hit!”

Reacher found himself humming along with the up-tempo dance number, although he couldn’t remember ever deliberately listening to it.

Billy’s face darkened. “Do you hear that? DO YOU HEAR THAT? Well, you can’t avoid hearing it, can you? That is the ear cancer that is killing America! Those earworms are devouring the Great American Songbook. We had faces then! We had legit head voice and diction and projection literate lyrics that actually rhymed! And now there’s nothing but melisma and belt and AutoTune!” 

Looking faintly uncomfortable, Reacher gathered up the underwear and plaid shirts that had just completed their tenure in the dryer. “Personally, I’d rather listen to an old-time bluesman, but thanks for the yogurt,” he said, departing. Socks that pass in the night, he thought.

But he was wrong. They would meet again.

“I don’t think you should go rogue,” Moist said. He took a bite of his grilled chicken wrap. Ranch dressing oozed down each side of his mouth. “I mean, sure, ‘rogue’ is our middle name. But acting as an organization. Teamwork. EVIL teamwork. Based on a top-down yet responsive EVIL organization structure.”

“I applied. They turned me down,” Doctor Horrible brooded.

“Sure, Bad Horse can be kind of a neigh-sayer,” Moist said, dabbing ineffectually at the Diet Dew spilled on his jeans. “But, whatever it says in the Loyal Sidekick playbook, this time I think he’s right.”

“Once I install the American Idol Brain is the Devil’s Workshop chip in that…that…tall, blonde, hook-driven, cosmetic-pushing, supermodel-befriending POPERAZZA, they’ll see the error of their ways!”

“No they won’t,” Moist said. He had been around for the entire development process and couldn’t see what substituting the terrible noises made by deluded would-be opera diva Florence Foster Jenkins for the songstresses’ catchy melodies. 

Reacher pulled a notebook, comically small in comparison to his large, meaty hand, from his pocket. He verified that one of his vast network of ex-military or law-enforcement female friends lived nearby. It was like the AAA. He was never far away from a beautiful, yet tough, woman who could caress you tenderly with the hand whose pinky she could kill with. The nearest one was Major Louise Charlestonberg (Army Reserve). She had become wealthy by sound investment of the settlement she received after being dismissed by the FBI for exposing (with Reacher’s help) a conspiracy going all the way up to the top.

They spent the night, and she lent him a .44 and a collapsible scope and 400 rounds of ammunition that fit neatly into the deep pockets of his jeans and flannel shirt. She would have let him borrow her car, but she turned on local TV and showed him the clogged-solid roads leading to the stadium. 

When he kissed her goodbye the next morning, he figured he might as well walk the eight miles to the bus station. He stopped off at a diner, fortifying himself with a Denver omelet, home fries, toast, six cups of coffee, and the house specialty: a short stack of pancakes with guacamole. 

Before he reached the bus station, he became the first responder at the scene of an attack on a very different kind of bus: a luxurious tour bus, befitting a superstar. The bus was ringed by bodyguards: an octet of well-built men of every national origin. Yet their outstanding physiques and combat skills were unequal to the onslaughts of a dozen off-brand supervillains. 

Reacher knew this was a job for him; he could get the details later. So he waded in, delivering a panoply of elbow strikes, uppercuts, and headbutts—at least where his antagonists were not wearing forehead-covering masks. It was touch and go for a while, but the tide turned when HitMan turned his coat and pounded on the window, asking for an autograph. And then Hatoful unfurled his wings and flew away. Soon the only attacker still conscious was dragged, kicking and screaming, from the wheelwell of the bus.  
“I knew you were trouble!” Dr. Horrible snarled. Their eyes met. They shared a single thought. Perhaps, if, at the right time, Billy had encountered a strong, yet compassionate man who would discipline him thoroughly, his entire life would have changed. Or, at least, it would have killed a pretty good Tuesday afternoon.

“Get out of here, kid,” Reacher said. “I owe you one, for the yogurt.”

“The lady would like to meet you,” one of the surviving bodyguards said. He was handsome, muscular, with a resonant voice and a sexy, cultured British accent: the kind of person who once would be fancast as Idris Elba, when everybody fancast him in everything, and now probably as David Oyelowo. “To say thank you. Celebrity has not alienated her from honest feelings such as gratitude.”

To avoid pursuit, they hacked into the alarm on the fire exit with a cold chisel and the handle of Reacher’s toothbrush (he reminded himself to replace it from the bathroom of the hotel suite), climbing the fourteen flights of stairs, scarcely getting out of breath.  
The superstar awaited him. When she saw them take a running jump from the balcony of the suite next door, landing lithely on their feet, she opened the sliding glass door. With a nod, she dismissed the bodyguard, who shook Reacher’s hand, went back to the balcony, and jumped down to the balcony below. After doing this three more times, he deemed it safe to break into a room and take the elevator down the rest of the way.

The beautiful singer/songwriter closed the sliding door, pulled the drapes shut, and then opened a bottle of champagne. She poured out two flutes, took one, and gave Reacher the other one. Then she went to the entertainment center.

“’Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’” she said softly. The palatial hotel catered to the artists who headlined at TerminatorGene Stadium, so every amenity, including turntables and a library of LPs, was available.

“Three twenty-nine a.m.,” Reacher replied.

“No, actually, that’s my favorite Judy Collins performance.”

“Oh.” Reacher said. “Personally, I like ‘The Story of Isaac.’”

And for a long time, they discussed the byroads and backroads they had traveled: one of them to receive the adulation of millions, the other quietly saving America one fractured hyoid at a time. And, although they knew they were never ever getting back together, their tall, blond(e), strong yet gentle coupling was profoundly satisfying.

“One Knight Stand” dropped on Mayday, and immediately hit #1 and stuck there all summer. At first everyone name-checked the chorus (“Where is he now? Wichita or Bogota?”) in every conversation, but then they just mouthed “Bo-go-ta” and did the hip-bump and karate-hands from the video.

And every time it happened, Dr. Horrible somehow knew, and alternated between dropping his head into his hands and shaking his fist at an unresponsive Heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a treat for paperclipbitch (letter at http://paperclipbitch.livejournal.com/179776.html), who asked for a story with Jack Reacher’s “awesome charming hulking failboatiness”; love of coffee; chivalry toward women. Paperclipbitch has a Reacher-is-bi headcanon, and made a Yuletide wish for Jack Reacher/Taylor Swift. 
> 
> The crossover is all down to me, though.


End file.
